Fiscal 2023 DIF Account

Worcester flights to Detroit ‘doing very well,’ MassPort exec says- Next Month Schedule Change????


Telegram headline
"Worcester Flights To Detroit Doing Well"





We agree that this new Delta flight is doing well, although we think 75% may be slight exaggeration.   For the first month this flight is a winner so far!!!!  Very good news, but obviously very short period of time, less then one month.


Current Schedule:


6:00AM  depart Worcester
7:50 AM   arrive Deroit

8:10 PM depart Detroit
9:50  PM arrive Worcester




If this flight is off to a good start, why change the schedule after only one month??  
We feel that this flight will flounder with this schedule with an arrival after 6PM in Detroit.
Hope we are wrong!!   


September Schedule:



1:45 PM   depart Detroit
3:41 PM    arrives Worcester

4:15 PM    depart Worcester
6:25 PM    arrive Detroit

We lose alot of connection possibilities landing this late in Detroit?




Comments

Anonymous said…
Why not move to an afternoon departure? Look at Worcester's track record. Afternoon Fla flights highly successful. Morning JFK? Not so much.....40% full.... At best. AA morning flight? Never grew to over 60% full. Dropped after 6 months, though I don't think AA left it on the vine long enough to ripen, because their afternoon flight is now cranking with over 80% loads! Why not have an afternoon departure to DTW? The other airlines are showing they work.


Some say an earlier departure will give more connecting opportunities. That's male bovine feces. Here's how airline hubs work. A bunch of flights arrive from the east. They sit on the ground for 30-45 minutes, then head west to their destination. In the meantime, flights from the west are heading into the hub, then continue to east bound destinations.

So, technically, you're right. The earlier flights have more flights to connect to. But no one is going to sit in DTW for 3+ hours for those flights. The morning flight gets in at 7:50am. The westbound connections leave about 45 minutes later. Then the eastbound bank comes in. So in that next hour or so, their connecting flight options are NYC, BOS, PHL, WAS, ETC. So, either they dont mind flying to DTW to get to NY. Or they are willing to sit in DTW for 3 hours for the next westbound bank.


The key point is that airline schedules are designed to align with the same direction youre heading. So, if youre leaving in the morning, you have the same westbound connecting opportunities in the afternoon.


So maybe Delta is taking a reading from AA's success with their afternoon hub flight to PHL?
Anonymous said…
Okay, let's not get ahead of ourselves with the term "success." Using the term cranking is pretty embarrassing considering 6 months into service the already minimal service was cut in half (are we supposed to just forget about how much of a historic dumpster fire Philly was with two flights a day?). It's 50 seats daily for god's sake and we're celebrating? So can I assume we are happy with this and that will be yet another service that won't be invested into growth? You're not acknowledging the plethora of other factors at play here. For example, American's numbers you could argue have more to do with them cutting the capacity in half leaving only one option to choose from not the time slot. If they cut the afternoon flight and left the RON options you don't think they would do any better? To claim that the morning slot wasn't working is ludicrous and actually pretty alarming considering at every other airport (where there's more than one flight a day to a hub, not to mention) the morning flights and late arrivals are the foundation of any connecting service. Also, afternoon flights for JetBlue "highly successful" but not enough for JetBlue to upguage. Which one is it? You must work for Massport with your misleading logic.

And ultimately myself and many others in the community simply don't buy this puff piece; the numbers are vague and even if assumed true are we really going to celebrate a 3-week sample size? Why do you assume we are stupid? Numbers like 33 and 50 percent scream talking out of our ass. It's pretty public how these flights are struggling. Go on both the American and Delta website and you will find several very empty flights. It's not as bad as it was before but absolutely not "cranking." It's 2019, it's not hard to keep track of these things. Worcester is the joke of the New England aviation community and reading comments like these only enable the notion that ORH will only be a token for favors at Logan, nothing more. I can't wait to see what city Massport "entices" United flies one 50-seat plane a day to.

I'm a Worcester resident and happy this airport is breathing life again but as an aviation enthusiast this is hard to watch. Have some pride.
Anonymous said…
Hey Anonymous #1, You sound like somebody who's got some inside information with loads since the numbers aren't released by the DOT for months later. Your notion that morning flights don't work is an absolute joke, especially regarding JFK, PHL, and Florida. If those two Florida flights departed between 06:00 and 08:00, they'd be filling A320s.

Your platform regarding westbound banks at DTW may be right but from what we've seen is that people really want to fly from Worcester to Florida. It was an absolute mistake for Delta to fly to DTW vs ATL. You can fly to any city in the southeastern US from Atlanta plus a ton of westbound, Mexico, and Caribbean routes.

I think Worcester may never be more than a leisure-only airport and that is fine, but we've gotta cater to that market and fly where it makes sense. Fly JetBlue nonstop to Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, and Ft. Myers. Get Allegiant back in to fly to Myrtle Beach and Sarasota. And get Delta to fly to Atlanta. If you wanna mix in some business routes, actually try and offer frequency. Gimme 3x daily IAD with United, 3x daily to PHL with American. The thing with Atlanta is that they can just fly one daily flight and get everyone they're targeting since the leisure crowd wants to fly out in the morning and return at night. They do the same thing in smaller NE markets like MHT and BTV.

And let's not pretend to be "holding our own". Massport is literally spoonfeeding us scraps. Let's grow on our own merits and I think Allegiant and JetBlue need to be the ones to do that (even though JetBlue has shown no indication of caring about ORH in their now 6 years here).
Dylan said…
Wow. Really nothing to add here without beating a dead horse. I just find it funny when they use the term flightS...you mean FLIGHT as in singular. One. One plane a day.
fesharp said…
Why is No one mentioning flights from Worcester to DC area.? Between Politicians, students, tourists and parents/grandparents, those flights could be just as full as any.
Please bring on DC area flights